French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Russian, French and U.S. representatives would also meet in Moscow on Monday to look at ways to persuade the warring sides to negotiate a ceasefire, Reuters reports.
“We want everyone to understand that it’s in their interest to immediately stop hostilities without conditions and that we start a negotiation,” he told the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
Le Drian did not make clear whether any Armenian and Azeri representatives would attend but Azerbaijan said its foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, would visit Geneva on Thursday.
The Armenian foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan would visit Moscow on Monday but gave no details. It ruled out a meeting with Bayramov.
The Azeri and Armenian leaders have also been at odds over their conditions for halting fighting that began on Sept. 27.
More than 360 people have been killed, including 320 military personnel and 19 civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and 28 Azeri civilians. They are the deadliest clashes since a 1991-94 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed about 30,000.
Azerbaijan says Azeri cities outside the conflict zone have also been attacked. This has taken fighting closer to territory from which pipelines carry Azeri gas and oil to Europe, and prompted British oil company BP BP.L to look at tightening security at its facilities in Azerbaijan.
“We must be attentive that the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan does not become a regional war,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in televised remarks.
Iran, which borders both Armenia and Azerbaijan, has been talking to both the former Soviet republics as concern mounts that Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia, could be sucked into the conflict.